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Starting from 2015 with full affect by 2019, the Personal Tax Summary (PTS) will change.In the past this summary was used by tax refund businesses, on your behalf, to establish whether a refund was due to you or not for a particular year. Generally, a refund of tax was due when a person had multiple jobs, as secondary jobs were taxed at a higher tax rate called a Secondary Tax Rate.

If a tax refund was due, the tax refunding business would lodge a PTS on your behalf, deduct their fee from your refund and issue you the remainder.

So what's the big deal with that?

Why didn't the Inland Revenue like this cherry picking of years? There may have been years where you owed tax but, because the current laws say you aren't required to file a tax return for these years if your earnings are solely from salary and wages, they were omitted from the return.

The big change

So what’s changing? From 2015, if you apply for a PTS your last four tax years will be checked and a PTS needs to be filed for each of these as well. The outcome is that any potential refund will now be reduced by the years in which you may have had tax owing.

What is a PTS

A personal tax summary (PTS) is for salary and wage earners and shows your income and tax deduction details for the year. These details are based on the employment, pension or benefit information provided to us each month by your employer or payer. Your PTS tells you if you've: